So you want to race cars online but don't want to pay for game or annual fees? Well step up to Live for Speed https://www.lfs.net/ . This is an older game but great physics, good graphics and game play, fast load times, small download and free for 3 cars and 1 track. Right now we have Alloy, Grit, Jakeman (just got it) and Myself racing and having a blast. Please check out the site and download the game. I think we can have quite a bit of fun with this one.

I downloaded the game and ran a few laps with a xbox one controller, I don't own a fancy wheel or anything - not much of a race simmer myself but it was pretty cool
If you guys decide to set up a race id give it a shot.

I highly encourage any of you who are even remotely interested in cars and racing to try this out. The download's not even 450MB, so even on my slow-*beep* connection it was a quick and painless install.

The driving/physics model is pretty good! And it's a little more forgiving than the edge-of-your-seat, high-pucker-factor, OhMyGoshI'mSoCloseToCrashing physics of iRacing.

The free download gives you two racing circuits—a mixed tarmac/dirt rallycross track and a longer asphalt circuit—and three cars: a fwd econobox, a rwd sports coupe, and a BMW-powered, winged formula car.

The XF GTi is a tiny fwd sh*tbox that's surprisingly fun—115 hp, <2,100 lbs. It's ostensibly modeled on a Fiat Punto or Citroen AX. With a little basic chassis tuning you can transform it from something with the road-holding manners of a Zamboni into something pretty fast and fun. You can even paint it up so it looks almost like a racing car for grownups:
The chassis tuning is easy, but allows a reasonable amount of setup customization. You can mess with front and rear toe, ride height, spring/damping rates, anti-roll bars—and they're all in Nm, so you don't have to try guessing at the anti-roll bar's spring rate. You can vary the amount of Ackerman steering, but you can't make asymmetric camber adjustments—you can set front and rear separately, but the values have to be the same side to side. Even with these limitations there's enough to keep you busy; enough that I actually busted out the calculator and did some setup math, which I haven't done in years (and I STILL can't beat Raven and his frickin' Xbox controller! ).

The two cars have identical power to weight, and are very closely matched on tarmac or rally circuits. And there's enough tuning to really personalize these things (I have a GTi setup that's almost identical with my own real-life Honda).

We've had some ridiculously fun times with this thing. And all for free. I highly recommend giving it a whirl if you own a USB steering wheel and pedals (or if, like RAF_Raven, you are ridiculously skilled with one o' these: